Earlier this afternoon, 2K Sports' Ronnie Singh—Ronnie2K on Twitter—gave everyone playing NBA 2K14 a code for a special pre-game player animation as a make-good for the online troubles that paralyzed the game this weekend. Naturally, when I went to enter the code on my PlayStation 4, 2K's servers were down.

Heading into this console transition my opinion was that, of all the genres that could possibly sell a new Xbox or PlayStation, sports would come in last. Despite the richer visuals and refined experiences I've seen so far, that opinion still stands.

Twenty-five years ago my best friend and I set up a wrestling ring in my basement—four barstools for the turnbuckles, some old mattresses for the canvas. The actual wrestling we did was hesitant, unplanned and uncompelling. But man, the stuff we did out of the ring makes me smile to this day.

Rumored last week when an ad appeared in WWE magazine, it's now official: The Ultimate Warrior will be making his first-ever appearance in the 13-year run of what is now called WWE 2K14. The catch is he's only being offered—for now one guesses—as a preorder incentive.

Reading between the lines of an open letter by NBA Live's new executive producer, one understands that whatever comes next in that franchise is really no continuation of last year's effort, which, like its 2010 predecessor, was aborted a few weeks before its assumed date of release.

Solidly established as professional basketball's best player and a mortal lock for the hall of fame, LeBron James, after 10 years as an A-list superstar, will finally appear on the cover of a video game when NBA 2K14 hits shelves this autumn.

If it wasn't obvious at its launch in November, then this past week should have made it clear: The Wii U is functionally irrelevant to sports video games, and there is no reason for any sports fan to buy the console. The only question now is how much that will really matter to the fate of the machine.

Wednesday was supposed to be a day of no news in Major League Baseball. There are no league games in January, of course; pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 29 days. And exit polling had long foreseen the shutout ballot, for the first time since 1996, that the Baseball Writers Association of America…

Video games seem to be the new way to leak NBA jerseys, and it's probably not intentional. The league has to share the designs with 2K Sports so they can be in the game and ready for its release date, long before the "official" unveiling. We've seen it with Brooklyn, we've seen it with the tweaked Knicks unis, and…

Gameplay impressions are difficult to form under the lights, sights and cacophony of E3 in full swing, where you never have enough time to see all of what you want, and there's always an appointment five minutes from now. It's… [Kotaku]

About this time last year, at E3, I was chewing the fat with a 2K Sports representative about NBA 2K11 which already looked to be the monster it would become. Long dominant in the pro basketball genre, the game with… [Kotaku]

Before setting off to claim a million-dollar bounty offered by MLB 2K11, Brian Kingrey did an analysis. He pored over batting averages, compared pitcher strengths and tendencies, examined the probable starters for the contest's opening day and the batting orders… [Kotaku]

For a brief moment Tuesday, I wasn't sure we'd be seeing any basketball video game this year, even though I'd taken for granted that NBA 2K12 would release, a death-and-taxes sure thing in October for more than 10 years.… [Kotaku]

Typically, these were unlockable items - prototypes of avatar awards, you might say. You earned them by accumulating points in gameplay, or found a cheat code that handed over all of it. Either way, there was some means of getting… [Kotaku]

Kotaku may have kicked off a fad last year, with our post on how to make your video game baseball presentation conform to real life broadcasting angles. MLB 2K11 directly cited the work as an inspiration behind its new broadcast… [Kotaku]

You can do a lot of crazy stuff when you win a million bucks. When he did, Wade McGilberry was approached by a long-lost relative with a pitch for buying into a pineapple farm. No thanks, Wade said. What he really wanted was a Harley. And with the dough he won from MLB 2K10, you're damn right he bought one.